11/22/2025
Conversion Hotel is an annual experimentation and conversion optimization conference held in Texel, Netherlands. It’s constantly referred to as the premier event for experimentation, and one that the experts visit frequently. Being invited to speak at CH25 was an absolute honour, a probable career highlight, and absolutely terrifying.
The topic was the Jungle of AI in Experimentation.
I’ve gone on a journey with AI. At first, the technology excited me, but then answering a simple question changed how I viewed it. I realised that the prevailing path of chasing ever-larger models is ecologically unsustainable and often misguided.
This talk told that story and advocates for a mindset shift in how we approach using AI. I explained what small models are, and how they’re more efficient. I also detailed my experiment pitting OpenAI’s latest model against a tiny alternative, small enough to run on my laptop. I demonstrated how, through thoughtful architecture, a tiny model can beat a “flagship” large language model.
The takeaway was a practical framework: three rules to build AI solutions that are faster, cheaper, private, and sustainable without compromising performance.
You can read more about my talk here, along with a short excerpt.
Overall, I thought it went well. Some feedback (including the negative ones):
Feedback:
“A fun presentation with some wonderful artwork. Iqbal’s take on how we could (And should) optimise our AI usage to minimise its impact on the planet was refreshing.”
“A very welcome breath of fresh air. I’m so over people (vendors, experts) telling me that AI is this magical tool that can solve all my problems.
“With Iqbal, you can see that he’s not all talk, he’s doing that stuff also. I love how he raised awareness for the ecological impact of AI. Probably the most important keynote of the weekend for me.”
“How brilliant were these slides! The drawings! Color contrast was a bit problematic for the circles, maybe not relying on light gray (for the energy comparison). Iqbal is such a sympatric guy. Loved how he also empowered everyone to take action.”
“A bit too deep and technical for basic users”
“I didn’t really get the point”
Overall, I was the third highest rated speaker at the event! Which was a huge relief as not only was this a technical topic, but an unpopular AI-realist take that I realise not everyone agreed with or were ready to hear.
